Apple iMac (24-inch, 3.06GHz)
Desktops Buying Guide
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May 26, 2008 11:39
5.0/5
I Bought the G3 233mhz Bondi in 1998 the day it came out, in 1998, then in 2005 a G4 1.25ghz eMac. Finally after waiting for a Graphics update I bought the 3.06ghz imac intel It is awesome out of the box, I can open every application on the darn thing at once and shut them sown with no spinning rainbow. The display is overwhelming and awesome! EVERYTHINg IS REALLY WELL INTEGRATED! And although costly its WORTH IT! A+++ -
October 2, 2008 09:07
5.0/5
This is a great machine. No complaints from this customer. -
September 16, 2008 11:21
4.5/5
If you have the money and are needing to replace a desktop computer I would highly reccommend the iMac. The user interface is really simple. It does take some time learning how the OS exactly works, but if you are like most people, just use it an hour every or so and you will have it down in a week or so. I garuntee you that you will love it. -
August 19, 2008 12:10
4.5/5
I purchased this machine as a refurbished Computer from Apple. When it arrived (5 days from California to Maryland) the only difference between new and refurbished is the cardboard box it was shipped in. All plastic coverings, appearance and performance were as if it was brand new.
This iMac is replacing my home desktop, an Apple G4 (sawtooth) upgraded to 1GHZ and was starting to show it's age (8-1/2 years). I didn't want to risk losing important family photos and itunes music so I decided a replacement was in order. I debated over and over about getting another notebook, but really believe that a decent desktop is critical component as part of home network, but if I had to choose between a macbook or an iMac&.I would go with the macbook because of convenient mobility.
A 100.00 rebate also allowed me to purchase a replacement printer (Canon i4500), which I've been happy with.
Because you can't customize refurbished products when you order, this computer has the standard 500GB hard drive (I would've preferred a 1TB internal). I looked past this limitation because of the included FireWire-800 port on the back. This allowed me to connect (daisy-chain) two FireWire-800 hard drives (G-Force 1TB, and a 750GB FW-800 iomega drive that was on clearance at BestBuy (159.00)). The iMac immediately recognized both drives. This effectively raised my total hard drive space to 2.25 TB with minimal performance impact, thanks to the FW-800 ports.
The iomega drive serves as my itunes repository and the G-Force 1TB is my Time Machine backup for the iMac and the Iomega drive.
The screen looks incredible, although not technically a High Definition screen the specs of this screen are impressive and DVD movies look fabulous. 1920 x 1200 resolution compared with Dell's XPS High Def 20" resolution of 1680x1050.
Ram upgrades are made easy by access to the bottom of the iMac. The iMac limited to a max upgrade of 4GB (as stated in product literature), but considering that RAM chips higher than 2GB (notebook RAM) are prohibitively expensive, 4BG is the max I'd upgrade to anyway. Also I've read in various forums that this may be an artificial limitation and the real limit should be higher because Apple boosted the system bus speed from 800MHz in the previous iMac to 1,066MHz in the new versions. The system bus plays a major role in communications between the processor and system memory...
Graphics Card - The included graphics card in the iMac 3.06 (and upgradeable in other iMacs) is a NVIDIA's 8800, which is part of the GeForce 8 series of graphics cards. These cards are ideal for playing the most demanding 3D games; plus working with high-end imaging applications such as Aperture 2.0 and 3D apps.
The card itself comes in several different flavors: GS (used in the iMac); GT (used in the Mac Pro) and there are also GTX, GTS and Ultra cards available for PC users.
Both of the cards used by Apple possess 512MB of RAM, which raised is interesting because NVIDIA's 8800 GS card is only supposed to have 384MB of RAM
It actually transpires that the 8800 GS in the iMac isn't actually an 8800 GS at all, but the same 8800 GT card from the Mac Pro that has been clocked down to match the 8800 GS speed.
The machine looks like a piece of art sitting on my desk, not just another tech gadget. The stand has a hole in the back for wire management and really creates a clean look.
The bundled software is outstanding, iTunes is the premier music database management software, and iPhoto has been improved immensely from previous releases.
The seamless integration of this computer with all various types of peripherals and the ease of creating a wireless network using Apple's airport extreme, make this computer one of my best purchases. -
July 9, 2008 07:19
4.5/5
I've been using my 24" 3ghz 4Gb Ram iMac for one month now. She is very very quick. I run dual head with a 23" cinema display. Screens are both great. My use is for photo/print(13x22"), Geomatics(GIS-ArcInfo), Terragen 3D landscape re-creation and Movies.
ArcInfo processes heavy analysis in as much time or less than any desktop I have seen or used with 4 cores. (have not tried ArcGIS on an 8 core unit although ArcGIS is not multi-core aware and more dependant on the processing speed)
3D rendering is subjectively nice and fast. No hard numbers, but I can say my productivity has increased at least 2.5 fold over the 3ghz P4 Dell box I had.
note:
My refurb 23" cinema display had a faulty powersupply and within 10 days I had a completely new unit sent to me. Apple support has been good to me. -
June 27, 2008 09:09
Mediocre
1.0/5
I purchased this iMac with some upgrades (memory, hard disk, wireless mouse, graphics card). The mouse was broken on arrival - the entire bottom was off. The mouse would not work with Boot Camp. After two calls, they advised me to call Microsoft. It seemed to be a run-around to me. I asked to return the computer (still within the 2 weeks allowed), but Apple would not approve the return because of the customization. The agent initially said that she would send me a new mouse, but then she too insisted that I call Microsoft without sending a new mouse.
Using this product is not at all intuitive, but I'll accept blame for that.
I am trying to sell it on CraigsList. If it doesn't sell within one week, I shall destroy it and throw it in the trash so I don't have to see it staring at me from the desk across the room. I don't want to bother with removing personal data and giving it away.
To me, Apple has the worst customer service in all of my years of purchasing computers!
I am going back to Windows, and I shall buy a new PC machine as soon as possible.
